In this paper, a new standard bus system for a series of small scientific satellites in the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA) is described. Since each mission proposed for the series has a wide variety of requirements, a lot of efforts are needed to enhance flexibility of the standard bus. Some concepts from different viewpoints are proposed. First, standardization layers concerning satellite configuration, instruments, interfaces, and design methods are defined respectively. Methods of product platform engineering, which classify specifications of the bus system into a core platform, alternative variants, and selectable variants, are also investigated in order to realize a semi-custom-made bus. Furthermore, a tradeoff between integration and modularization architecture is fully considered.

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JAXA has carried out the hypervelocity impact tests of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) plates together with University of Padova. Quasi-isotropic CFRP plates of 2.3, 3.5, and 4.7 mm in thickness were tested. Aluminum sphere of 0.8 to 2.9 mm in diameter was used as projectiles. With a two-stage light gas gun, the projectile was launched with a velocity range of 2 to 5 km/sec in the normal direction to the CFRP plate. Since the perforated hole and the crater on the CFRP plate after the impact are filled with flakes of the carbon fiber, it is difficult to determine the perforation of the projectile. Therefore, whether the projectile perforated the CFRP plate or not was decided by the craters on a copper plate installed behind the CFRP plate. After the impact, peeling along the fiber direction was observed on the surface of the CFRP plate. Moreover, internal delamination was generated near the surface. Finally, a ballistic limit equation of CFRP plates of 2 to 5 mm in thickness was calculated on the basis of the Cour-Palais equation. The ballistic limit equation was in good agreement with the test results.

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This paper describes the design and development of a dedicated GPS receiver for spin stabilized launch vehicles. The receiver is built around a commercially available low cost GPS chip set and operates an enhanced firmware specifically adapted for high dynamics applications. In order to keep tracking a sufficient number of GPS signals even during the spinning motion, we use multiple GPS patch antennas and space them equally apart each other around the cylindrical launcher body. A new signal combining scheme was developed to avoid deep fading in antenna gain pattern. This technique requires phase control to keep signals received on multiple antennas in phase with each other. A dualantenna GPS receiver was developed to evaluate the proposed signal combining algorithm. The result showed that the proposed algorithm was capable of providing stable and continuous signal tracking under a high-rate spinning motion while simple RF combining through a power combiner was failed.

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This paper proposes relative trajectory designing methods for spacecraft in orbit using the concept of virtual potential field. The potential field is neither a real one, such as gravitational field, nor an arbitrary one without restraint, but the one derived from relative motion equations known as the Hill's equations. This concept allows us to express the relative motion of satellites with a new set of parameters, leading to easy understanding of the relative motion. Potential field principle is attractive because of its simplicity, which allows us to intuitively reach simple and effective control methods for either single or multiple satellites. In the following part, the basics of the virtual potential field concept are presented as well as some results of applying the methods to relative trajectory designing.

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